“You are my concern, Kitty. You should pack up your belongings and leave here. I will pay for everything, but please hurry. The stage leaves in less than an hour. Once word gets around there’s smallpox in Buckskin Joe, I expect the line will shut down until it’s over.”
Silver Heels’s golden tresses swirled like a swarm of fireflies when she shook her head. “I can’t leave here. Sam Castle is in bed stricken with pox, as are a couple of miners. These men need me to care for them. There are several vacant rooms here now that the other girls have gone. I hope with all my heart we won’t fill them.”
I was so taken aback by her determined demeanor, it took a while to find my voice. “It’s not safe for you to remain here,” I said feebly.
Silver Heels turned to me, hands on her hips, blue eyes flaring. “What is not safe is for me to leave you fellows to care for yourselves. I was raised with six brothers and know firsthand that most men are lucky not to kill themselves with their own cooking. And do any of you know how to apply a mustard plaster or make a camphor asafetida? Of course you don’t. All of you wonderful men have been kind to me, far too kind for me to run away when I can be of help. I’ll hear no more talk of my leaving.”
When a woman gets her mind set on a course of action, it might as well be chiseled on a stone tablet and added to the collection Moses got from the Almighty. My heart was heavy when I realized nothing I could say or do would extricate my sweetheart from the danger of remaining.
“There is something you could do for me, Ben,” she asked charmingly.
“Name it,” I said.
“Please go fetch Dr. Walker, then drop by Mr. Tabor’s store.” Kitty reached into a pocket of her apron and brought out a gold eagle. “Purchase a couple of bottles of castor oil along with a jug of New Orleans molasses, some lye soap, iodine”—she hesitated—“and a large bottle of laudanum to help bring on sleep.”
I nodded as I waved the back of my hand at the proffered coin. “I’ll be right back with what you asked for.” I turned and went out, walking in a cold rain to find the doctor. My head began throbbing as if a hammer were beating on it. I ran the errands Silver Heels had asked of me, then went to my cabin and took to bed.
The next two weeks I remember little of, only nightmarish sketches of freezing cold alternating with terrible heat. I found out later that Silver Heels had become concerned by my absence and sent some men to check on me. As if in a dream, I recalled her angelic face hovering above while bathing me with the aroma of lilacs.
When my head finally cleared and I found the strength to sit up, Dr. Walker and my friend Horace Tabor came to visit.
“It’s about time you quit lollygagging and get back to doing an honest day’s work,” Tabor said, wearing that sly grin of his.
“I’m surprised you managed to say the word ‘work’ without choking,” I rasped. I then looked to the doctor, who was worriedly stroking his brown Vandyke. “How bad is it?”
“Smallpox epidemics are all terrible to behold. This one, thankfully, seems to have run its course. There’s been only one new case in the past few days.”
I took a drink of water, then struggled to sit on the side of my bed, which I was told, had been carried, with me in it, to the dance hall.
Horace Tabor placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. “That Silver Heels turned out to be a mighty fine nurse. There was over thirty men brought here for her to care for. I’ve never set much stock in miracles, but not a single soul she looked after went and died, which is more than I can say for a lot of other good folks hereabouts.”
Doc Walker said, “I would sure like to have her for a nurse. That little lady worked day and night, I don’t know how she managed. To confound me even more, some of the cures she came up with I’d never heard of before. I can only say that you were lucky to have been brought here. There’s been sixty-one die, along with a few that’ll be left badly scarred for life.”
I blinked matter from my eyes and surveyed the huge room that was now filled with beds. “Where is Silver Heels?” I asked.
Tabor and the doctor exchanged sad glances. After a brief moment, Horace said, “She was the last one to catch the smallpox.”
Dr. Walker spoke up, “The crisis has passed—she will pull through, only—”
“Only what?” I said with all the force I could muster.
“The blisters were mainly on her face,” the doctor said with sadness. “They were deep and plentiful. I regret to tell you that the scars are terrible to behold—and permanent.”
“Silver Heels will always be the most lovely lady in the world to me,” I said, feeling a tear trickle down my cheek.
“I’d venture every man in Buckskin Joe feels the same way,” Tabor said. “We’ve all chipped in to try to repay that little lady for what she has done—and for what she’s lost. We’ve raised over five thousand dollars to give her.” He forced that sly grin of his to return. “You rest up for a spell. This evening, all of us are going to surprise Silver Heels with the money. I’ll come along for you to lean on.”
“Thanks, I want to tell her that I love her,” was all I could say before the laudanum once again wrapped me in satin darkness.
Even now as I look back upon that time across a deep chasm of years, my heart aches. When we made our way to Kitty Clyde’s room, it was vacant. Somehow, my love had found strength enough to pack her belongings and depart. On her neatly made bed sat the pair of dancing shoes with glistening silver heels along with a note, which read:
My beloved friends,
Please remember me as I once was. I do not wish to become an object of pity. There are many fine doctors in the East. I shall go there to see if my beauty can be restored.
My heart is gladdened that I was able to help the few I did.
Tell Ben Childress to take care of my wonderful dancing shoes. I shall return one day to wear them again.
Yours humbly,
Silver Heels
Grizzled miners wept when they read that note, as did I. Dr. Walker eventually made the suggestion that we hire a lawyer to bribe the lawmakers up at the capital to name the towering peak east of town in Kitty’s honor.
Surprisingly, the matter was quickly adopted by the legislature. Mt. Silver Heels towers majestically; its snowy crown brushes the abode of God. A more fitting monument I could not envisage, even though no mountain could ever be so large as my love’s heart.
At the close of the Civil War, Buckskin Joe died. The mines simply ran out of gold. After that, there was no reason for the place to exist. Within the space of a few weeks, I became the only person in a deserted town to await Kitty’s return. I did not mind—the less competition the better.
Horace Tabor went on to fame and misfortune. His story is so well known it does not need repeating by me.
I abandoned my cabin to live in the Angel’s Roost Dance Hall, where I reside to this day. Alone, inside that vast empty parlor, memories echo like the spoken word.
Every evening after a cold sun hides its face behind craggy peaks, I build a fire in that great potbelly stove. I then slide a deacon’s bench close. The heat feels good on my bones of late. Close by my side are Kitty’s shoes.
I sit and watch flames cast ghostly shadows on the walls while I await my love’s return. I know she will be back. She said so in the note I hold. Tonight, for certain, or tomorrow night at the latest, Silver Heels will return.
In my mind’s eye, I see her coming through the door, bathed in beauty and the sweet aroma of spring lilacs. She runs to me and we melt into each other’s arms.
Big Henry begins to play the piano while Frenchy wails on his brass horn. We embrace and dance a waltz just like we did all those many years ago. I once again hear happy laughter and the sonorous peal of dancing silver.
My long vigil is over. I am content.
Bear River Tom and the Mud Creek Massacre
William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone
It was a fine summer day in Abilene, in the Year of Our Lo
rd 1870, when I came nigh to losin’ a fight for the first time since my days in the prize ring back in New York City.
A few weeks earlier, some of the city fathers come to me and asked me to take the job of city marshal because they knew I was a tough hombre and had wore a lawman’s star in a few other places. I accepted, but only after tellin’ ’em that the only way I’d take the job was if I had a free hand to carry it out the way I saw fit, without interference from nobody. In them days, Abilene was a mighty wild place, and had been ever since the trail herds had started comin’ up from Texas a few years earlier. Sometimes, likkered-up cowboys outnumbered the reg’lar citizens half a dozen to one. So those old boys just looked at me and said, “We don’t give a hoot in hell how you do it, Tom, just get it done.”
So the first thing I done was to get some signs made up sayin’ it was unlawful to carry firearms inside the town limits, and then I put’em up in the saloons and the whorehouses and other places where the cowboys went, and on the road leadin’ into town too. Lord, you never heard such caterwaulin’ as when those Texans saw them signs. I thought one or two of ’em was gonna fall down and go to foamin’ at the mouth. But after a few of ’em gave me lip about the new rule and I had to crack their heads together for ’em, the rest of the bunch started payin’ more attention. Killin’s fell off to where there weren’t more’n one or two a night. Compared to the way it’d been not long before, Abilene had got plumb peaceful.
Now, my name is Thomas James Smith, but folks has called me Bear River Tom for a long time now, ever since I was the first lawman in a minin’ camp called Bear River City, in Wyoming Territory. The people there who prevailed on me to take the job didn’t know it, but I’d been a policeman back in New York City, where I was born, after I’d decided that I didn’t want to be a prize-fighter no more. I don’t mind all that much bein’ walloped, but after a while it gets a mite tiresome. My police career didn’t end too well, but that’s a tragic story and I ain’t in the mood to tell it right now. As some fancy perfessor might put it, suffice to say that I left New York and come west, and I been out here ever since and consider myself as much a frontiersman as if I’d been growed here.
Anyway, after a heap of troublesome driftin’ around, I lit in Abilene and liked it, and like I said, in the time I’d held the job of city marshal, I’d cleaned up the place considerable. I wore a brace of Colt’s revolvers, one on each hip, but I hadn’t yet drawed those hoglegs in the line of duty. My malletlike fists were enough to take care of the problems I ran into. I had a big gray stallion called Grizzleheels, and I rode him up and down Front Street when the cowboys were in town, and if any of ’em refused to shuck their guns, I just leaned over and give ’em a good sharp rap on the head. That always made ’em more reasonable about things. Either that or unconscious, in which case they didn’t cause no trouble neither.
So there I was, a-standin’ on the porch outside the marshal’s office on that fine mornin’, lookin’ up and down Front Street and thinkin’ what a good job I was doin’, when a buckboard comes rattlin’ along at a high rate of speed, dust boilin’ up from its wheels. There was a young woman at the reins, whippin’ along a pair of mules hitched to the wagon. The gal seemed so frantic I knew somethin’ had to be wrong, so I stepped out into the street and held up a hand for her to stop.
But instead of stoppin’, them mules stampeded right at me. I heard the gal yell out in alarm, but she’d lost control of that team and couldn’t do anything to stop ’em. I was about to get trompled.
My footwork ain’t as fancy as it was during my days in the ring, but I can still move pretty fast when I need to. I needed to then. I jumped back, out of the way of them mules, and reached up to grab the harness of the closest one. Now, I’m a pretty big gent, so when I hauled back on the harness, the mule stumbled. I heaved again and the mule like to fell over. But he stopped and so did his pard. Naturally, the buckboard rocked to a halt too.
“Are you all right?” yelped the gal. “Thank God you were able to get out of the way!”
“I’m fine,” I told her, “but you’d ought to do a better job keepin’ these jugheads under control.”
“I know. I was hurrying because there’s trouble—Oh!” Her eyes—which were blue and pretty by the way—had lit on the badge pinned to my shirt. “Are you Marshal Smith?”
I nodded and said, “Bear River Tom, that’s me. You say there’s trouble?” I was practically salivatin’ at the prospect of a fracas, especially if this pretty little gal was gonna be watchin’ whilst I dispensed some frontier justice.
“My name is Evie Phelps,” said the gal. “My brother Bud and I have a farm south of town on Mud Creek.”
I hadn’t never heard of Evie Phelps and her brother Bud before, but I nodded like I knew who she was anyway. There were so many folks movin’ into these parts that it was mighty nigh impossible to keep up with all of ’em. It struck me, though, that she looked sort of familiar. I reckoned I must’ve seen her and her brother around town before.
“Go on,” I told her.
“A gang of wild cowboys has besieged our farm,” said Evie. “They stampeded their cattle through our crops, and I think they wounded Bud. He ran out to try to stop them, and there was shooting . . .” Her voice faltered in a way that was heartbreakin’. When she was able to go on again, she said, “I was already on the buckboard and the team was hitched up because we were coming into town today to buy some supplies. Bud told me to get out of there as fast as I could and to fetch help. Then he drew the fire of those madmen so I could get away. The last I saw of him, he was limping into our soddy, and I don’t know how badly he was hurt . . . but I know they’re going to try to kill him, Marshal. They’ll burn him out, and then they’ll shoot him down like a dog.”
I didn’t blame her for bein’ upset, but as tears started to well up in them blue eyes, I said, “Don’t you worry, Miss Evie. Things ain’t as bad as they seem.”
“They’re . . . they’re not?”
“Nope. Those cowboys’ll have a mighty hard time settin’ a soddy on fire. About all they can do is burn the grass off the roof. Could get a little smoky, but if your brother’s holed up in there, he should be all right. He’ll be able to stand ’em off.”
“But what if he’s badly wounded? What if he’s bleeding to death? Can’t you help him?”
I scowled. “You say your farm’s on Mud Creek? Whereabouts?”
“Two miles south of town.”
That was a problem. I was Abilene’s city marshal. My jury’s diction, or whatever you call it, didn’t go past the town limits. But I was also the only law in these parts, so if anybody was gonna help Bud Phelps, looked like it had to be me. I’d just stretch a point a mite. Since Mud Creek ran through Abilene before meanderin’ off south, if anybody asked, I’d say that my authority extended on down the creek bed.
Anyway, who the hell was gonna argue such a thing with me and risk gettin’ walloped?
“You just wait right there,” I told Evie once my mind was made up. “I’ll saddle my horse.”
“Thank you, Marshal. Thank you so much.”
I wanted to tell her to save her thanks until we were sure her brother was still alive, but I didn’t risk it for fear she’d go to bawlin’. There’d be enough of that soon enough if ol’ Bud had got hisself ventilated fatal-like.
So I went around back of the marshal’s office to the shed where I kept Grizzleheels and slapped my saddle on that stallion. Evie Phelps led the way out of town, whippin’ those mules into a trot as we headed south.
I couldn’t help but glance over at her as we rode along. Even scared and upset like she was, she was pretty as a picture. Her cheeks were rosy and the wind whipped her long yellow hair out behind her head. I ain’t the sort of fella what gets carried away rhapsodizin’ about feminine enchantments, but if I was, I might’ve busted into song right about then.
“Did you ever see those cowboys before they attacked your place?” I asked. “Know any of their name
s?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. Bud and I don’t have anything to do with cowboys. Our farm is off the main trail, thank God. We usually see the dust from the herds as they pass by, but that’s all.”
I thought it might be a good idea to keep her talkin’ so’s she wouldn’t be thinkin’ about how her brother might be shot full of holes by now. I asked, “How long have you lived there?”
“About six months,” she said. “We came out from Missouri after our folks died and we lost their farm because we couldn’t pay the taxes on it. Bud said we could make a go of it homesteading out here.”
“How’s it been goin’?”
“Fine. We got our first crop in and I think it’s going to be a good—” Her voice caught again. “It would have been a good one, if those cowboys hadn’t stampeded their cattle over it and ruined it.”
“Maybe you can salvage some of it,” I suggested.
“Not if Bud is dead.” She was back to that again. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Now, don’t you worry,” I told her. “No matter what we find when we get out there, folks in Abilene will give you a hand. You’ll be fine, Miss Evie.”
I thought she was gonna start sobbin’, but she took a couple of deep breaths and settled down some.
I’d been thinkin’ on the fact that I’d sort of recognized her there in town, once I got over the excitement of almost bein’ trompled by them mules. I sure wished I could recollect where I’d seen her before.
We’d been followin’ Mud Creek ever since we left town. It’s just a middlin’ little stream, no more’n ten feet wide and a couple of feet deep ’cept when it floods, and its banks are lined with cottonwoods. After a while, I saw a little rise ahead of us—there ain’t no big rises in Kansas—and Evie said, “Our soddy’s just on the other side of that hill.”
I waved for her to stop the buckboard and said, “Hold on a minute.” She hauled back on the reins and brought them mules to a halt, and I reined in old Grizzleheels at the same time. As I leaned forward in the saddle, I listened so hard it brought a frown to my face.
Lost Trails Page 7